Cognition

During an interview with Lisa Mullins of WBUR’s Here & Now, graduate student Emelie Eldracher '22 shares the excitement she felt after winning the 2024 Paralympics silver medal win in the mixed-four crew and delves into her research at MIT focused on developing a low-cost system to gather biomechanical feedback for athletes and help improve their performance. “I really hope to contribute to the sphere and hopefully we can use AI in a way that influences athletes to help them get that one-hundredth of a second, as our coach likes to say,” Eldracher explains. “Because if you add up all the one-hundredths of a second in a race, that could be the difference between a medal or not.” 

Graduate student Emelie Eldracher '22 has won a silver medal in the Mixed PR3 Coxed Four A Final at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, reports Brendan Kurie for The Boston Globe. “It was the third consecutive silver medal for the United States in the event, but this year’s boat was filled with first-time medalists,” explains Kurie. 

Graduate student Emelie Eldracher '22 will complete in the Paris Paralympics as a coxswain in the PR3 Mixed Coxed Four race, reports Henry Dinh-Price, Alexa Podalsky and Aiden Sprole for The Boston Globe. “While studying at MIT, Eldracher designed the first AI-powered heated jacket,” they write.

A gift from alumnus Charles Broderick will enable researchers at MIT and Harvard to investigate how cannabis effects the brain and behavior, reports Felice Freyer for The Boston Globe. Prof. John Gabrieli explains that it has been “incredibly hard” to get funding for marijuana research. “Without the philanthropic boost, it could take many years to work through all these issues,” he notes.

WBUR reporter Carey Goldberg spotlights how a gift from alumnus Charles Broderick is funding research on cannabis and its impacts on the brain. "We were saying, 'Wouldn't it be great to study this?'” says Prof. Myriam Heiman of the need to study the impacts of cannabis. "And then this gift comes along and really is enabling us to do everything we wanted to do."